


Windmills

by hafital



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-06
Updated: 2010-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-28 03:58:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hafital/pseuds/hafital
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a child, Lucy loved windmills. The way they spun, the way they turned round and round, standing tall but constantly moving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Windmills

**Author's Note:**

> Relating to Series 2 episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" and Series 3 finale episodes "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords."
> 
> Written for joanne_c in the Doctor Who Femslash Ficathon (dw_femslash on LJ). Thank you so much to killabeez for the beta. Always happily in her debt. Link goes to comm entry.

***

As a child, Lucy loved windmills. The way they spun, the way they turned round and round, standing tall but constantly moving. On her parents’ estate, she used to stand on the low stone wall that circled the lower gardens and windmill her arms, until her blood throbbed hot at the end of her fingers.

Her mother said, “Pet, stop trying to fly away and come and sit for tea.”

Her father said, “Come now, my love, be a good girl and do as you’re told. You can play tomorrow.”

With the wind in her blood and the sun in her eyes, she sat at the table set for afternoon tea, ankles decorously crossed, hands neatly folded. Under her father’s gaze, under her mother’s patient corrections, she stilled the turning within her.

***

 _Ribbons fall from her hair._

 _“Reinette,” her mother calls, softly, firmly, reining in her attention. “To me, child, attend me. Now, how do we address a marquis? And how do we address a king? Very good. Stand before me, my girl, and I shall have the Cornielle first, and then the Racine.”_

 _They are in her room, sitting by the fireplace. She stands before her mother, Reinette places one hand on the brick. Would it spin around? Spin, spin. Tick tock. Drum drum drum drum._

 _Her mother knits and doesn’t look up when she speaks. “I’m waiting, Reinette.”_

 _She breathes in, ready to enact the fickle love of Alidor for his Angelique._

***

He was like a merry-go-round, constantly moving, round and round. Like flying. Like running free. At least, that was how it had felt -- at first, at the start, before -- the thing that drew Lucy to him like wind over sunlight.

When he said, “Come, my love, be a good girl and do as you’re told. Sit with me, “ he drummed his fingers up her inner thigh, windmills in his eyes. She shivered. “My girl, my perfect wife.”

He liked her in red. She wore the dress for him. And danced with him in front of the fireplace.

***

 _It is her mother’s friend, a lady Reinette only ever called Cherie, who teaches her how to make love, one afternoon, in the swell of summer, when the bird song trills._

 _The window is open. There is a small breeze that makes the gossamer fine curtains dance, makes them sail forward like pale arms, reaching inside. To Reinette, it is as if they reach for her. The curtains’ reflection is caught in the mirror above the fireplace._

 _Cherie’s skin is soft like linen and her scent floats in a cloud around her. “Come my child, my girl.” Her fingers are long and delicate, bejeweled, they trail down Reinette’s neck to the lacing of her dress._

 _Her body sways as her corset is loosened, tug and pull, back and forth, until it falls away._

 _“Close your eyes,” says Cherie in a scented whisper, and Reinette is turned and turned and turned until she’s laughing and dizzy and she falls backward onto the bed._

***

There were pills in the morning, and pills in the evening, and pills in the middle of the day. Within white walls and shining floors and hushed voices and the yelling, always the yelling. Close by, far away.

Sometimes Lucy wore a red dress, but they always made her take it off.

The sister with the brown hair said, “Pet, stop trying to run away and sit here with the others.”

Run away, fly away, arms windmilling, sliding on the slick white floor.

***

 _Reinette doesn’t know what cowboys are. Not really. She went through the open door of his mind, but those images, that knowledge, grows more faded with each passing day._

 _In the dark of night she imagines cowboys are lesser angels. Perhaps with clocks for hearts, tick tock, tick tock. Perhaps with lace cuffs and frozen masks. She laughs as she realizes that describes almost every noblemen of her already extensive acquaintance._

 _Since that night when he came crashing through a mirror to save her life and the lives of all the French aristocracy, she has not been able to tell time, but must rely on others to inform her. When she tries, the hands spin._

***

From her window at the hospital, she could see how the wind played with the tall grass, traveling in circles, swishing. In the distance, she could see a windmill. Lucy spent many hours gazing across the green meadows to the lonely, silent structure and wondered why she ever cared for them.

Her parents were strangers to her. When they came to take her home, her mother hesitated, then rushed forward. Her father brought his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. They drove Lucy home, to the home she shared with _him._

“Can’t I live with you?” she asked as they drove through Surrey. Her parents didn’t answer, but glanced at each other. The car creaked as it circled around the long driveway up to the house.

“Come,” her mother said, walking purposefully over the loose gravel, entering the house as the servants opened the front door, “no one _blames_ you, pet, you know that.”

Lucy followed, trying not to hear the blame layered underneath every one of her mother’s words for having the bad taste of marrying a murderer. It came from low breeding, so vulgar, so _common_. Naturally, Lucy’s mother did not desire to be seen with Lucy, at least not just yet.

“My love,” said her father with a hand on her shoulder. “No good ever came from dwelling.”

The driver brought in her luggage and her parents smiled. They kissed her cheek, and said they’d call.

After they left, Lucy pulled at her necklace until it broke. She ripped at her coat until the buttons flew. Then she ran through the house, to the garden outside, her arms reaching for the sky.

***

 _The broken glass from the mirror chimes almost musically when it is swept up._

 _As Reinette waits by the fireplace, she picks tiny shards from the bottom of her shoes, small beads of blood forming on her fingertips._

 _She waits the next evening and although she is hopeful, she envisions a long string of evenings just like it stretching out into the future. The pain is quiet inside her._

 _Afraid to light the fire, she stands before the fireplace, passing her hand over the rough brick. Reinette feels foolish to dream of him, she who can command a king. So, she huffs and continues with life, although a part of her is always waiting. A part of her returns every night to stand before the fireplace, in the exact spot where he had stood. Until her lover comes, and says, “My girl, let us dance, let us spin in the golden candle light.” And she must obey, for he is her life’s work._

 _She is not a girl anymore, but Reinette is too much the courtesan to falter in her attentions._

 _The evenings continue, collecting into years. Reinette feels a languid heat circling in her blood, a deadening weight that steals her health. She sees it reflected in the King’s eyes, a fear that she welcomes._

 _And still, the fireplace is silent. He will not come in time._

 _When has she ever waited for a man to come to her? When has she ever played the complacent woman?_

 _So, she writes a letter, and with a word to her maid for arrangements -- there is very little Reinette could not do, should she so chose -- she closes her eyes and stops her breath, her king at her side. Let them mourn. Let them place a body in a coffin and drive it to Paris, one last trip. She is dead. And free._

 _With her maid’s help, Reinette anticipates her appointment with death, and chooses to meet it later, at some future date, yet to be determined. As her friends mourn, she steps forward to the fireplace and feels around. There it is, all she has to do is push. And the fireplace spins._

***

He left the house full of strange artifacts: alien hair-dryers and round yellow disks, metal helmets, metal spheres, and pink scooters. A vast collection acquired here and there with the drive of obsession. The strangest was the fireplace, that he had transferred brick by brick from someplace in France. It had belonged to a marquise, he said. It had belonged to a king’s mistress, he said.

Her parents gone, alone in the house, Lucy thought she saw something moving in the fireplace. “Come, girl,” she said to herself, and sung softly, “the windmill goes round and round.”

Lucy turned her back to the fireplace, shut her eyes: it was just a trick of the light, and whatever it was it wasn’t real. The doctors had said so. She must believe them.

A dull bang, a scrape of stone against stone. Lucy turned, and the fireplace spun.

***

 _“Et où est-ce que c'est? Où suis-je?”_

Lucy at first was too stunned to do or say anything. The woman who stepped through the fireplace was beautiful, a little older than Lucy, with an air of decadent refinement. Her hair was golden with threads of gray; her skin pale with a pink flush at the apple of her cheeks. She was dressed in something sixteenth century crossed with early generic future century.

With a step forward, then a tilt of her head, Lucy circled around. “This is England. This is my house. Who are you?”

The woman moved as Lucy moved, step by step. She answered in English. “My name is Reinette. Who are you?”

Lucy thought she should know that name -- something he had said, once, one of those times when emerging after days spent in that damned blue box. “I am Lucy Saxon.”

Reinette paused then continued. “Ah,” she said, with a slow smile, “the Prime Minister’s wife. Tell me, my dear, _quelle heure est-il?_ ”

***

Over afternoon tea set up in the lower garden, with the light playful breeze tossing leaves in lazy circles, Reinette tells her story and Lucy listens.

When she stepped through the fireplace, Reinette had a choice. Her one true cowboy was not on the ship, having stepped through the fireplace moments before -- for her, the irony -- but his companions were there, waiting for him. They hadn’t seen her, their attention diverted at that moment by a mauve light on a panel blinking on and off.

“I don’t know why, but I hid. Stepped into a darkened corridor and listened when he returned. I thought of him as my lonely angel,” she said, falling silent for a moment. “But that was a childhood dream.”

In truth, Reinette knew why she hidden and not gone with him as she had thought she wanted, although she could not put it into words. It was seeing the girl called Rose, and noticing how she also waited for him, would likely wait for him forever, if need be. Reinette might always love him, but she had already waited so long. If she went with him, she would still be waiting.

Although none of this was spoken, Lucy understood waiting, and she reached across the table and picked up Reinette’s hand, threaded her fingers through.

“What did you do?” asked Lucy.

“I was alone and at first it seemed I had made a terrible mistake. To die alone on a cold, dead metal ship cannot be preferable to death amongst all who love me. But, as it turned out, that flashing mauve light was what they called a distress signal. Another ship arrived. I made them tow the _SS Madame de Pompadour_. That was the name of the ship.” She laughed, then shrugged, “They cured my illness. I had the fireplace rebuilt. It took even longer to find someone who could open the time window, so meanwhile I read my own history,” with a wry and sad smile, “pages in a book. The time window was opened. I came through, but of course so much time has passed. A few years for me, centuries for everyone else. And so I am here.”

Lucy looked toward the house where she could just glimpse the interior, the walls, the brick. She had her own story to tell of that year that never was. Lucy thought she could tell some of it, to this woman.

“Live with me,” said Lucy. “I’m alone here. I have all of my husband’s money, and this house, and all that he collected. Surely there is something here that can tempt you to stay.”

As an answer, Reinette touched Lucy’s face, a thumb across her lower lip.

***

Reinette was ripe, the way a woman who has seen and loved and lived so much can be, but Lucy was still the child who wanted to windmill away.

On a warm morning, in the middle of a meadow speckled with wild flowers in little bursts of color, Lucy let Reinette guide her as only a woman skilled in love can do. Hands on her shoulders, her touch cool and light, down her neck, down her arms. They mirrored each other, Lucy in front, Reinette in back, and they spread their arms wide, swaying in the breeze.

With a song, Reinette removed Lucy’s dress and then stepped out from her own clothes until they were naked in nature, turning toward each other.

“Come, my love,” said Reinette with a smile. “It is time to fly away.”

Lucy closed her eyes, arms reaching up, gasping softly at the gentle pull on the nipple of her left breast. She lay on the ground, on their clothes, arms still reaching up, skin puckered with gooseflesh. There was the sun and the wind and Reinette.

Reinette lay beside her, nipples to nipples and legs entwined. Lucy pushed toward Reinette with a hand between her legs, her own widening for Reinette in turn. She wanted to taste Reinette’s skin so she found a breast, wanting and needing and finding so much more than she ever dared dream. Lucy panted as the world turned and spun and she flew freely into the air.

***

Reinette had a better idea. They made plans. An investment here, a purchase there, until all was in place, and they could let their money wait for them. One day, they might come back, if they so choose. Time would skip ahead, but they had each other as companions. There was so much to see, so much to do, and they never had to wait, never had to obey; they could fly forever.

Without a word to her parents beyond a tasteful note sent with a small gift, Lucy and Reinette held hands and stepped through the fireplace.


End file.
